1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to vision recognition, and more particularly, to an image generation apparatus and method for performing image processing for vision recognition with low power consumption.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to the miniaturization of digital cameras and the development of image processing technology, a variety of digital devices have an image capturing function. For example, a digital camera is included in digital devices such as mobile phones, handheld televisions, portable personal computers, notebook computers, digital audio players and Portable Multimedia Players (PMPs), thereby enabling image capturing. The digital devices may operate in a preview mode, a still image-shooting mode, or a video-shooting mode, to enable image capturing.
A digital camera in a digital device may be used for image capturing, and also for a vision recognition function for inputting information. In other words, digital devices may extract image information from still images, preview images and videos captured by their digital camera, and use the extracted image information as User-Machine Interface (UMI) data.
FIG. 1 illustrates vision recognition, in which a screen of a notebook computer moves depending on the movement of a user's hand.
Referring to FIG. 1, the notebook computer extracts the movement of a user's hand from preview images, and changes data displayed on its screen depending on the movement of the user's hand by combining the extracted movement of a user's hand with display information.
The digital devices consume a substantial amount of power because they should extract information for vision recognition from images captured in a preview mode, a still image-shooting mode and a video-shooting mode of the digital camera. Because of the substantial power consumption, the application of vision recognition technology may be compromised to portable digital devices as a user interface.
In addition, the digital devices should extract information for vision recognition from optical information of many more image pixels than necessary since they use captured images for vision recognition, causing an increase in computation time and power consumption. To compensate for these shortcomings, the amount of information obtained from image pixels may be reduced. In this case, however, unnecessary operations may be undesirably added. Because of the long time required to output information about many image pixels, this method may not be applied to user interfaces that require a very fast response speed.
Moreover, digital devices use optical power which is filtered to about ⅓ or less by a color filter because they use an image sensor for image capturing, which causes a deterioration of the low-light performance.